Joseph Smith’s Administrative Records
Joseph Smith’s youthful quest for
personal redemption and religious truth resulted, according to his
accounts, in a series of revelatory experiences that thrust him into
leadership of a new religious movement. The fourteen years from the
organization of the church in 1830 to
Smith’s death in 1844 were turbulent
times for its adherents, fraught with violent external opposition
and major episodes of internal dissension. Yet a remarkably
resilient core of people and practices developed and flourished.
Outside observers were sometimes surprised at what they saw as the
church’s cohesiveness.
Key to understanding Joseph Smith’s
leadership and his governance of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints is an extensive array of records created for
administrative purposes that constitute the Administrative Records
series of The Joseph Smith Papers. Although record
keeping was sometimes inconsistent and incomplete, especially in the
early years of the church’s existence, Smith and other church
leaders persisted in their attempts to create and preserve records.
These efforts undoubtedly contributed to the growth, survival, and
vitality of the church.
The administrative records are a complicated and
sometimes confusing body of materials, reflecting both the
complexity of the church’s organizational structure as it developed
over Joseph Smith’s administration and
the difficult circumstances under which the record keepers labored.
The series includes records of the organizations in which Joseph
Smith was involved as an administrator, records that were housed in
his office, and records of meetings and initiatives in which he
played a large part, such as church conferences and his 1844 presidential campaign. Among the
records are books of certificates and licenses that he signed or
that were signed by others on his behalf and kept under his
direction.
All of these records will be available on the Joseph
Smith Papers website, josephsmithpapers.org, and some of the records
will be published in print. In addition to the administrative
records most closely associated with Joseph Smith, the website provides
records of organizations in which Smith had some involvement,
including minutes of the
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (organized in
1835), the Nauvoo high council
(1839), and the
Female
Relief Society of Nauvoo (1842). Excerpts from many of the administrative
records—including correspondence, minutes of meetings, and financial
documents—will appear, with annotation, in the Documents series of
The Joseph Smith Papers.A Joseph Smith
revelation dating from the formal organization of the
church in April 1830 mandated that
the church keep records. Church leaders began creating and retaining
administrative records almost immediately and continued this effort
throughout Smith’s lifetime and beyond. The bulk of the Smith-era
records were created from 1839
to 1844, when church headquarters were in , Illinois.
Fewer records survive from , ,
and (each of which was the center of church activity
for a time) in part because of the forced evacuation of church
members from some of these locations. The creation of additional
administrative bodies in Nauvoo provides another reason that more
records exist for the church’s sojourn there.
The surviving administrative records can be grouped
into various categories, each with its own history of clerks and
scribes.
Minutes of Conferences and Councils
The foundational “
Articles
and Covenants” of the church directed that “church
business” be conducted in meetings of the church’s elders. Beginning in June
1830, such meetings, called conferences, were to convene
every three months. Additional meetings were held as necessary. was appointed to create minutes for the
first conference and to “keep the Church record and Conference
Minutes until the next conference.” After
Cowdery wrote minutes for the second conference on 26 September 1830, custody of the
records was delegated to . Cowdery
left soon afterward on a mission to the western frontier of the . , David’s brother, apparently retained
custody of the minutes, both the loose-leaf minutes that had been
recorded up to that time and the records of succeeding meetings
written by himself and other clerks through late 1837. These records reflect the
movement of church operations from to
in 1831 and the establishment of a
second gathering place in in 1831. John Whitmer relocated to Missouri
in January 1832 and seems to have
copied minutes of meetings into a bound volume beginning sometime
between 1833 and
1835.
Most of the meetings for which Whitmer copied or kept minutes took
place in , , and counties,
Missouri.
Neither the original minutes nor the bound volume that
apparently prepared is extant.
However, sometime between April and June 1838,
and copied the minutes from
Whitmer’s record into another
bound
volume. Minutes taken by Robinson from 3 March 1838 through
16 January 1839 and minutes of two June 1844 meetings held in were
subsequently copied into the volume.
The Joseph Smith Papers feature this record book
online under the title
Minute Book 2.
After left
in November 1831 with the minutes
entrusted to him, clerks began another set of minutes of meetings
held in , Ohio, recording them in loose-leaf format. then
copied these minutes into a bound volume, beginning in December 1832. Subsequently, Kirtland
minutes from 1833 through
1837 were copied into the volume as they became
available.
This record book is available online as
Minute
Book 1, so designated because it was physically created
first, though its initial set of minutes are for meetings that
occurred later than the first meetings recorded in
Minute
Book 2.
The contents of Minute Books
1
and
2 reflect the development of the church’s hierarchy and
the expansion of its administrative structure. In the church’s
initial years, Joseph Smith and led the organization as first elder and
second elder, respectively. However, they also consulted on church
business with conferences of elders, which authorized Smith,
Cowdery, and others to carry out responsibilities assigned by the
conferences. For example, at the church’s first conference of
elders, on 9 June 1830, five
elders, three priests, and two teachers were granted licenses to
function in those ecclesiastical offices. At the
second conference, on 26 September
1830, Smith “was appointd by the voice of the Conference
to receive and write Revelations & Commandments” for the
church.
Beginning in March 1832, by which
time Joseph Smith was “President of the High Priesthood” and and were his
“councillers,” the term “council” was introduced into the minutes of
meetings, and it seems to have sometimes been used interchangeably
with the term “conference” in 1832.
High Council Minutes
Seeking to replicate what he understood to be “the
order of heaven in ancient Councils,” Joseph Smith organized a standing
“high council” at in February
1834. He
revised the minutes of the initial meeting of the high
council, which outlined the council’s responsibilities and
procedures, to serve as a “constitution” for the organization. The presidency of the high priesthood, led by
Smith, also constituted the presidency of this high council. The
council was “appointed by revelation” to deal with “important
difficulties” that could not be resolved by other bodies, and its minutes became a major component of
Minute
Book 1. In July 1834 Smith
organized a high council for in , Missouri, patterned
after the Kirtland high council, with , , and as its presidency. The
records for this organization were included in
Minute
Book 2. Joseph Smith is a prominent figure in this record,
as he presided over and attended conferences and councils when he
visited in 1831, 1832, 1834, and 1837, and after he moved to in March
1838.
There is no extant set of minutes for either the
presidency of the high council in —which was also the presidency of the church—or
the presidency of the high council in . The lack of such records seems to underscore
the intention that the “business” of the church—which included
disciplining church members, discussing financial matters, and
assigning church members to preach and proselytize—was to be
conducted in the meetings of the councils over which these
presidencies presided. In 1835 and early 1836, while the Missouri presidency was
in Kirtland awaiting a promised endowment of power in the , the Missouri and Kirtland presidencies
sometimes combined to constitute their own kind of high council, a
council of presidents. Copies of minutes of some of their meetings
were recorded in
Minute Book 1.
Other administrative interaction among members of the presidencies
may simply not have been recorded except for occasional mentions in
journals and correspondence.
Minutes of General Church Conferences
In addition to meetings of specific councils, the
church held a more broadly inclusive category of meetings called
“conferences”—meetings stemming from the directive to have the
elders meet on a regular basis to conduct church business. These involved
relatively less deliberation and more ratification of church
authorities and policy decisions. They also served as a platform for
the leaders to share their thoughts. Some of the conferences
extended over two or more days. While some were simply called
conferences, others were given the title “general conference.” The
Church Historian’s Office General Minutes collection includes
loose-leaf minutes of more than a dozen such meetings from April 1839 to 1844.
Because Joseph Smith played a key role in
these meetings, these minutes, along with a few comparable minutes
from the Joseph Smith Collection in the Church History Library, will
be included in the Administrative Records series.
Letterbooks
Sometime in or around December
1832, Joseph Smith and his clerical
associates began copying outgoing correspondence into a bound volume
before sending the letters. Additionally, they copied into this
letterbook six items of ’s
correspondence originating in 1829 and
1831. This volume, which includes
copies of letters dated through 4
August 1835, is found on the Joseph Smith Papers website
as
Joseph
Smith Letterbook 1.
A second letterbook was begun in 1839.
Clerks copied into
Letterbook 2 a wide variety of letters and
documents from as early as 27 June
1829. They also copied contemporaneous outgoing letters
from 1839 to 1843. In
, clerks filed
originals of incoming correspondence as well, resulting in the
preservation of numerous letters received by Joseph Smith.
Civil and
Military Records
Joseph Smith’s administrative
responsibilities multiplied in , and the creation of new organizations there led to a
significant increase in the number of administrative records. In
1841 Joseph Smith helped to
incorporate Nauvoo and to obtain a city charter from the state
legislature. This signified his formal involvement in civil
government in a way that he had not experienced before. In February 1841 he was elected to serve
as one of nine councilors on the Nauvoo City Council, and he played
a major role in the adoption of ordinances and resolutions for city
governance. Smith was elected vice mayor pro tem on 22 January 1842, and when Mayor
resigned, Smith was
elected mayor by the city council on 19
May 1842.
He thus became the custodian of the corporate records of Nauvoo,
which were maintained in his office. These records, including those
of the city council over which he presided as mayor and those of the
Nauvoo Municipal Court, will constitute a major online
component of the Administrative Records series of The Joseph
Smith Papers.
Joseph Smith also was the
commanding officer in ’s militia unit, the Nauvoo Legion, which was
ultimately responsible to the governor of . Smith was commissioned lieutenant general—a
rank that was unique among militia officers in the —by Illinois
governor on 5 February 1841. Smith’s involvement with the militia was
largely ceremonial because his second-in-command, a major general,
oversaw its operations.
The records generated by the Nauvoo Legion constitute a significant
part of Smith’s administrative records and will be made available online.
Council of Fifty
The final organization created under Joseph Smith’s direction was the
Council of Fifty, a group chaired by Smith with the purpose of
laying the foundation for a theocracy in preparation for the
millennial reign of Jesus Christ. This “literal kingdom of God”
would “govern men in civil matters,” making it distinct
from the church. More proximate concerns of the council were to
locate a new site for Latter-day Saint settlement, to promote Joseph
Smith’s 1844 campaign for the
presidency of the , and to
cultivate relations with American Indians. The council’s ambitious
agenda included an attempt to produce a constitution that would
improve upon the Constitution of the United States. After weeks of
discussion and preliminary drafting, those assigned to create the
new document found the task too daunting. They thus turned to Smith
in hopes that revelation would solve the problem. Instead of
producing a static written document, the ensuing revelation informed
the council that they themselves were God’s constitution and his
“spokesmen” and they were to “do as [God] shall command you.”
The last meeting of the Council of Fifty under Joseph Smith’s leadership was held
on 31 May 1844, less than a month
before he and his brother were murdered in
, Illinois.
, the president of the
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, did not reconvene the council until
4 February 1845, by which
time identifying a new home for the Saints was becoming more urgent.
Determined to carry out the “measures of Joseph,” the council helped
plan for the relocation of the Latter-day Saints and coordinate
preparations for their removal to the Great Basin in what was then
, a part of . The present volume includes the three manuscript
volumes of minutes of the Council of Fifty that date from its
inception in March
1844 through 13 January 1846, as well as a few additional
contemporaneous records of this council that were kept
separately.
More than two dozen clerks, secretaries, and recorders
created the records that are part of the Administrative Records
series. , for example, copied
letters and other documents into Joseph Smith’s
first
letterbook and served as clerk to the high council. recorded and copied minutes and correspondence.
was
general church clerk and
city recorder. copied letters into Joseph
Smith’s
second letterbook. Three men from the British
Isles played key roles: , from , was clerk for the
Council of Fifty and kept other records; , from Ireland, served
as Nauvoo city recorder, general church clerk, and secretary of the
Nauvoo Legion; and , from
England, worked with the records of the Nauvoo City Council and
courts.
The removal of church headquarters to new locations,
worrisome and sometimes violent confrontations with neighbors,
internal dissent, and major turnover in the church’s leadership
threatened the church’s stability and continuity. In the face of
such challenges, the systematic creation, preservation, and use of
administrative records helped preserve an element of institutional
memory while also maintaining some continuity in the church that
Joseph Smith led. In combination
with Smith’s revelations, translations, and historical records, the
administrative records laid a foundation of precedents, procedures,
and policies upon which to build and rebuild.